The Pennsylvania 
Forestry Problem 

An Address by 

Henry W. Shoemaker 

(Member of New York Horticultural Society, Etc.) 

Before the Garden Club, of 

Williamsport, Pa. 

September 15, 1920 




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"Pe!iDsylvania's Forests hold the 
key to her future not less than her 
farms, her factories and her mines." 

I —Governor Sproul at Ole Bull's 

I Castle, July 19, 1920, 

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Published by 

Times Tribune Company 
Altoona, Pennsylvania 






Gift 
Autho" 



The Pennsylvania Forestry 
Problem 



yw^ 11^ were great cities built in such terrible waterless 
\XJ deserts^ This ([tiery is promulgated many times by trav- 
^^K elcrs in Xort'hern Africa, and the an;;\ver \> that in the 
days when those cities were built they were not in the 
midst ol' deserts, Init in the heart of fertile an*! flowering regions. 
In the clays before the Christian era, when the tide of Roman 
colonization was spreading over the known world, L<ibya, 
Xuniidia and Mauritania were lands of the utmost agricultural 
prosperity, known far and wide for fruit raising and stock breed- 
ing as well. Forests covered th.e mountains and ravines, and 
there were many rivers, lakes, waterfalls and si)rings which added 
to the advantages and Ijcauty of the region. For these reasons, 
])r()])a])iy more TJian the desire to sulidue savage tribes, caused 
the Romans to penetrate into the country back of the Alediter- 
raneaii coast and enforce their form of cultiu-e at the point of the 
sword., Tlie natives eith.er were killed or driven further sotith, 
and the conquering Romans became possessed of a vast territorv 
almost from the Red Sea to the Atlantic (3cean. which became 
known as the granary of Europe. Rich ports were established 
at 15one, Bougie, Algiers and Oran to transport the products of 
the fields to Europe, and a ])eriod of continued prosperity seemed 
assured. The forests teemed with all kinds of wild beasts and 
birds, every animal from the elephant to the lion and leopard 
being found there, and these creatures, like our modern exponents 
of European civilization, gave concern to the Roman colonists. 
Not that they were never exploited hnancially, as when the 
Emperor Titus dedicated the faraotis Colosseum at Rome five 
thousand lions from Alauritania were slaughtered. It was 
thought, however, that lions were destructive to stock, just as to- 
day bears are wilfidly Ijlamed l)y the good j^eople of Potter County 
every time a stray cur dog kills a sheep. The lions, leopards, 
cheetahs, bears, lynxes, hyenas, wolves and jackals of Mauri- 
tania must be destroyed lest a few carcasses of dead cattle be 
eaten by these forest monsters. Some wise Romans devised as 
a means of ridding the country of wild beasts that the forests 
be fired, as the hatmts of the animals could not be reduced fast 
enough l^y lumbering, and on an appointed night a simultaneous 
conHagration was started covering the length and breadth of the 



land. Historians tell us that it was a magnificent spectacle to see- 
thit -Vtlas, the Djurjura and the A'ures mountains aflame from: 
horizon to horizon and the destruction of wild 'beasts must have 
been a large one, though many escaped, as the last lion in Algeria 
was not killed until less than forty years ago. These wholesale 
biu'nings were continued semi-annuall}' until, with the annihila- 
tion of the forests came the deluge of retribution. The roar of 
the lion miglit not be heard at night from every mountain peak 
as of yore, but there came a diminishment of the flow of the 
streams, an irregularitv of rainfall, a change in climate that 
brooded ill for agricultural prosperity. Year by year the com- 
pulsory burning of the forests was renewed with splendid results, 
as to lions, Init ill results as to agriculture and human comfort. 
Rivers and streams dried up or came down from the moun- 
tains as destructive torrents for a few days and were dry for 
six months .thereafter. Fisli Hfe was seriously affected. Potash 
from the burning forests dropped into sucl'i streams a's w^ere 
not dried up altogether, killing off the trout so completely that 
until recently it was believed that the trout were not indigenous 
tO' Niorthern Africa. Wells and springs which supplied the 
marvelously constructed aqueducts of such cities as Timgad, 
Lambese. Tolga and \'olubilis no longer flowed and there was a 
clamor for the water which never came. No one seemed to 
l)lame the burning oft' or the, cutting oft' of the forests as the 
cau-^es — the}' awakened to that too late, just as did the people of 
Scotland and France when they deforested parts of the High- 
lands and the Cevennes because of wolves, and reaped the inex- 
orable desert whirlwind. Agriculture diminished vear by year, 
there was no water for the stock, farmers became • discouraged 
and a general exodus to Italy began. The cities with no local 
barter or commerce were forced to live on themselves ; tht?y sank 
into laziness and vi'ce, and when the barbarian hordes from the 
south, emboldened by stories of their enervation, attacked them, 
they were easy victim,s of massacre and pillage. • Timgad and 
several other great cities w.ere destroyed by fires, and as there 
was no water supply, and diminished populations they were 
cleaned up as neatly as the "getaway fires" performed a similar 
work at Cross Fork, English Centre,. or other defunct Pennsyl- 
vania lumber towns. Thus came the downfall of Roman colon- 
ization in Northern Africa, and, today all that is left are broken 
columns, ruined temples and baths, deserted streets, gloom and 
de-olation, where' on the dark nights the hyena and the jackal 



skulk about the al'andoued basilicas, or Imrk dolefully from 
shattered baptistries much as Omar speaks of a siuiilar condition 
in treeless Persia — 

"They say the Lion and the Lizard keep 
The Courts where jamshyd gloried and drank deep." 

Arc ve to have tliis terrible story re-enacted in Pennsyl- 
vania '■* [t seems headed that way now, and only a' Legislature 
with a strong sense of right and a stronger backbone can stem 
the m.ad rush towards a duplication of the ruin of the IJarbary 
States, and the similar tragedies of deforestatiou in China, Persia. 
Mesopotamia and portions of Italy, France and Spain. I'enn- 
svlvania cannot exist without the forests. She cannot be a 
])urelv urlian State. There must be the ])roducts of forest and 
held to hobl tlie ])roper l)alance to existence. Every person who 
leaves the farm for the city becomes a consumer, and tlie few 
producers left camiot supply the demand and prices rise The 
era of forest hres. going unchecked for a ccmtury, has left an 
indelible impres^ on the State. Alread)' it has diminislied tlu' 
flow of our rivers and streams and lias dried up hundreds of 
creeks and springs. We now have torrential rains lasting a 
fe\'</ (lavs, or sometimes weeks, as oiu" experience of the present 
August, then long dry periods of drought, when agriculture 
and live stock suffer. 

We have high winds due to the absence of forest wind- 
breaks, an unbroken sun. like shines on the Sahara, and increas- 
ing difficulty for crojjs to grow, owing to uncertain moisture and 
increasing soil sterility. It is 'l)ecom,ing harder for the farmers 
evevv }-ear to grow crops and fruit, owing to poor soil, lack of 
water and inordinate increase of insect pests. ^Fhc destrucHon 
of our forests l)y any means Ijrings an endless chain of evils. 
The a'bsence of trees means loss of birds, and tlie birds. 
more than any other means, control man's insect enemies. The 
lumbermen of Pennsylvania cannot be blamed but partially for 
tlie S'poilation of Penn's Woods. Tliey are only to blame for 
leaving so much litter in the woods as fuel for flames. If they 
had cut everything clean Nature, bountiful Nature, would have 
grown a new crop of trees. It is a part of the scheme of nattu'e 
to utilize forests as well as to admire them. When the "slash- 
ings" after lumbering operations have been burned over several 
times, the humus is destroyed and the ground becomes unfit to 
])roduce varities of trees of commercial value. They come up 
with fire cherr\', quaking a.sp, chestnut and scrub oak. which in 



turn die down and rot and enrich the soil for pine, hemlock, 
])c-ech and maple. Tt, therefore, takes many years to ht the soi] 
tc grow good trees after spoliation by fire. It is not the right 
of any nuan to .show his contempt ^or posterity hy permi^^ting 
forest fires. We have been supine and remiss and asked too 
much of a bountful Providence. If Pennsylvania had not been 
rich in minerals and other valuable products it is safe to assume 
that the forest fire menace would liave l)een controlled half a 
century ago or the people beggared. As it is, with tlie cutting of 
the timber has come the steady drift to the mill, the foundry, the 
factory and railroad sho]) of the industrial centres, abandoning the 
unprofitable farm and the cnt-o\'cr forest to the cruel flames. 
We cannot escape the deadly parallels of history. Only as 
recnlly as 1915 Central T'ennsylvania newspapers used the same 
language in describing a hideous forest fire on the Bald Eagle 
Mountain — ^''A magnificent spectacle"— as did the benighted 
Roman chrorriclers of the first and second centuries A. D. 

The high cost of living has been tlie danger signal to warn 
us that our drift to the cities is unwise and uneconomic. This 
warning is yet unheeded as, year by year, more of our farmers 
become discouraged by adverse conditions, "nuake sale" and rush 
to the industrial slavery of Pittsburg, Altoona, Harrisburg. Sun- 
Iniry. Renovo or Avis, each recruit added to the army oi con- 
sumers making living harder for the rest. High rents, canned 
food, restricted life, all these handicaps seem preferable at first 
to the desert farm. Yet soon all these workers become dissat- 
isfied, for their lives are dismal and restricted. This drift must 
go unchecked for some years yet, or until a wholesale onslaught 
against the spoilation of our forests will result in more trees 
grown than are destroyed. If it w^ere not for the forest fires 
which Ijurn over close to half a million acres annually lumiber- 
ing could go along unchecked in Pennsylvania, natural reforest- 
ation is so rapid. At present, lumbering vieing with the fire evil, 
our State huh fair to become a counterpart of the desert wastes 
of Mauritania or China. In foreign districts where the remaining 
woodlands are limited no tree can be cut on private lands with- 
out a permit, and a new tree planted in its place ; that should 
Ijecome a law in Pennsylvania next Winter. Tlie taxes on 
privately owned woodlands ought to be rebated so that it would 
pay persons of moderate- means to save trees as an investment 
instead of falling victjms to the blandishments of the owner of 
every portable "thunder shower"" saw mill. The aj^propriation 

6 



asked by our Cliief Forester Mr. Tincliot, namely, one million 
and a quarter dollars for two years for forest fire prevention 
should be passed without a' quibble, as it is a small outlay to 
protect property conservatively valued at potentially upwards of 
one hundred millions of dollars. The part of the Pennsylvania 
desert not now owned by the Commonwealth, the wreck left 
by the forest fires, and to a lesser extent by the lumbermen, five 
million acres, should be bought and, to use the words of Gov- 
ernor Sproul in his epoch making address at Ole Bull's ca'stle, 
"The State must be bonded, if neces'-ary," to accomplish this. 
The State owns already one million anc a quarter acres which it 
lias handled disgracefully, letting it burn over, reducing its finan- 
cial and economic value year by year. But let us hope that we 
have come to the turning of the road. With the Governor, who 
always has the public with him, as no other Chief Executive has 
had since the days of Curtin, in full accord and the best for- 
ester in the world at the head of our State forests, and a wide- 
spread sentiment created, the like of which has never been shown 
before, no memlber of the coming Legislature can afford to be 
reactionary and vote against a measure wfiich means everything 
to the future welfare and prosperity of our beloved Common- 
wealth. The Forestry Department of Pennsylvania, well con- 
ceived by Dr. -Roth rock, has not functioned foT twenty-live 
\ears. due to lack of funds and the lack of those back of it to 
get it. A Pemisylvam'a all of city dwellers with an abandoned 
coiuitryside is unthinkailjle, yet a change must come that will 
make farm life more profitable and consequently attractive. 
Nature's balance must 'be restored, foi-ests, streams, birds, nat- 
ural beauty, prosperity, then will come the day of the forest. 
of the natural simple life so fast slipping from our Hsing gener- 
ations. The forest as the primitive home of the race barkens 
back ro a healthier and nobler type of living when the simple 
faith of our fathers de\^eloped the American spirit and patriot- 
ism. We cannot allow the six million acre desert to expand one 
acre more and must hold it back and treat it like the arch 
destroyer of civilization that it is. It is in the hands of every one 
of us, dwellers in Central Pennsylvania, to forget self for a season 
and devote energy, time and influence to savin*.' the forests, and 
the slogan will be "Pennsylvania Beautiful." Linked with the 
forest, apart from its material side, is the life of gardens, blos- 
soms and flowers, the spiritualized side of existence and the labor 
to preserve our woods can only be a labor of love. Our reward 



will be great, for generations unborn will enjoy what we have con- 
served for them. We are liopelessl}' bonnd to the future, as we 
are to the past, if there is a desert, uninhabited Pennsylvania with 
the ruined stacks of Pittsburg, the crunibling capitol at Harrishurg 
and the fallen City Hall at Philadelphia as the most distinguished 
features, then we who are here today will be to blame. Let our 
part in the future be the creation of a new Pennsylvania 
IJeautiful ! 

Honorable Emerson Collins, your eloquent and gifted fellow 
citizen, is planning an outing to the North Mountain, which he 
knows and loves so w^ell, some day early in October. He will tell 
such congenial spirits as go along, "David of H?p>py Valley," 
J. Horace McFarland, Colonel Lloyd, Charles H. Eldon, and 
their type, of'the wonders of the Lancaster Road, the Govern- 
ment Peak, and many other points of interest. The Pennsylva- 
nia Alpine Club, through its talented Secretary, J. Herbert 
Walker, has promised to co-operate. The Garden Club should be 
represented on this pilgrimage to our local '"Alonarch of Moun- 
tains, " and the .speaker will hope to meet you one and all on that 
delectable occasion, the date for which will probably be shortly 
set by Mr. Collins. The North Mountain is surely a garden of 
gardens, where the rarest of wild flowers, shrubs and trees are 
found right at the doors of your home city ! 




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